I'm nodding to most of your comments. Cal is larger than life, and yet so very accessible; I think Storm worked true literary magic with him. He's fallible, so very fallible, and yet people keep falling in love with him, and all he can do is shrug! He's not perfect at all, but he's really not a rogue because his heart nearly always means so well; the only true mania was with Orien, the one truly unexpected event in all of the books to my mind. Well, aside from what you brought up... Ulaume and Flick?! Ultimately happy chesnari, having harlings... meep. My only gripe about that was that I grew so very fond of them in book one of the 2nd trilogy, I really lamented their absence in the second and third!

As for characters I was intrigued by who show up only in the third trilogy, I fell for Galdra. And Moon. But for another later-set gapfiller, I know I'd be drawn to a Flick/Ulaume/Aleeme/Azriel story, explaining their recovery or lack thereof, and what the heck Flick and Ulaume were doing while their beloved child was being held in Fulminir.

Diablo I really disliked. ;) But I think we were supposed to...